Recently, I've been wanting to make a custom live iso with a couple of tools that I need but I really don't know where to start or what to do… any help?
E: I didn't phrase my post correctly, I need a portable set of desktop tools for development, running on the gnome desktop
ok, but is there a way to turn the system I get out of configuring nix into a live iso easily?
Absolutely. I think there are even some tutorials out there.
https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Creating_a_NixOS_live_CD
https://nix.dev/tutorials/nixos/building-bootable-iso-image
Maybe you could work in some code from: https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Impermanence to really keep it wiping almost everything on reboot.
Once you arrive at something, please share it to help the mindshare.
Feel free to look at my config at https://github.com/harryprayiv/nix-config (I added a branch for liveISO that I worked on for a bit).
If you git clone then switch to that branch, you could use the command ./switch_TUI to access the little TUI I made just now to walk you through the evaluation of your iso config under option 2 in the TUI to evaluate (kind of my way to evaluate and dry run until nix stops giving warnings) home manager config and option 15 for the evaluation of the system part of the config (all of the relevant files for this live inside of /system/machine/liveIso and I just connected them in my top-level flake). You’d just have to change filesystem mounts and other hardware related stuff…maybe comment things out until it asks for them then start to open things up again. That’s the beauty of laziness, IMO.
This seems like a worthy endeavor so I worked on it a bit.
Edit: heavily edited to include stuff that I made for you.
Thanks! I'll take a better look at it and nixos (again) when I have time, I like how honest you are about text editors lol. Looks incredibly complicated at a 1st glance
the liveIso branch is SIGNIFICANTLY pared down for your consumption though admittedly I was unable to get the live iso part working.
I got a working, good, lightweight, kickass xmonad home-manager config into the system/machine/liveISO folder just for you.